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The 2019 Nigerian general elections: what’s at stake for the working poor?

With the Nigerian general election just around the corner (scheduled for 16 February 2019), the campaigning is in full swing. The incumbent All Progressives Congress (APC) party will once again field President Muhammadu Buhari as its candidate while Nigeria’s largest opposition party, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), has picked former Vice President Atiku Abubakar to run for president. But what are the demands of the working people of Nigeria and is anyone addressing them?

In the run-up to the 2015 elections, I wrote a similar piece looking at the demands of working families, and the main issues then, as now, remain: growing the economy in a way that goes beyond mere growth figures; making significant improvements to infrastructure, particularly electricity supply; tackling chronic insecurity in the country (from the Boko Haram insurgency in the north-east of the country to the intercommunal violence between herders and farmers in the country’s Middle